‘I’m grand, thanks,’ I said.

‘I think you should tell us out that story, Jane,’ Margaret Rose said. Eager.

I shot Margaret Rose a look.

‘I’ll put a sliver of marmalade on it, first for you.’ Jane wasn’t giving up. ‘If we can’t picnic outside on the lovely lawn, this will have to do.’ I’d eat her concoction, and Margaret Rose would eat it too, poorly, out of one side of her mouth and perhaps bite her numbed cheek a couple more times. ‘Come now, have one, maybe they’d wet some tea for us, isn’t this nice?’ Then, as though she’d been struck hard, or wound up, she began. ‘I taught Claire Hegarty.’ Bingo. ‘Ever since she was a little girl, y’know?’

I licked the sticky mess off my fingers.

‘Oh, really, Jane? No, I didn’t know, I don’t know her very well at all, his daughter,’ I said.

Margaret Rose grimaced. It was nice being alone, the three of us, without Claire, easier to chat, though we were conscious of Shane, nodding at him sometimes, and fussing when the students came in and out, telling them that they should wet his lips, or close the window near him, for it was not nice for him to be in a draught.

‘Ah, no, you don’t, sure why would you? Well, Miss Claire was a pupil of mine …’

‘No way?’ I said.

‘And tough as nails. I’d give her velvety stamps in her copybook, you know, to tell her she did well … she loved to be told she did very well. Preferred being told she did the best, and even then she’d ask, “Am I the best?” It was difficult to disagree with her. She liked stars in her spellings notebook, her maths, Irish verbs, music. Everything was always in order, except that awful walk.’

‘Ah, ya,’ Margaret Rose agreed, ‘noticed that … very flat-footed.’

‘Yes, yes, very much so,’ Jane replied. ‘Well, she’d wear cerise-pink ribbons tied high up on her head and when she knew an answer, which was all of the time, you see, she’d put her arm up straight over her head in the air and keep it there, like one of those swimmers, paused.’ Jane mimed the action, holding her own hand high above her head, then thrusting her arm backwards, she continued, ‘She could hold it there all day long, sometimes I’d just leave her be. I’d let her sit and hold her hand up all day long.’

Alex texted.

I ignored it.

Jane took a long breath, snapping one of the crackers in half, but didn’t bring it to her mouth. ‘Really she must be just like her grandfather, the one I want to kill, you see, because I don’t know where she got the brains from,’ Jane sighed, ‘and the rudeness. And you know, another thing, she always knew the correct answer. Miss Claire Hegarty. Miss. Miss. MISS. Hand up, shaking it now, so impatient to tell me everything she knew, I knew it all already, she didn’t need to try so hard. So I’d strike her.’